


A Garden on Gallifrey

by lost_spook



Series: Happy Endings, Hasty Exits [4]
Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gallifrey, Serial: s123 Arc of Infinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-14
Updated: 2011-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:19:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Arc of Infinity</i> - Nyssa: "I hope you don't mind, Doctor, but I'd like to stay on Gallifrey and marry Damon."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Garden on Gallifrey

**Author's Note:**

> (NB. Poor Damon. He's friends with Andred and he thinks he knows how these things go, so here's an AU where he somehow gets it right...)

“Was this too sudden?” asked Damon. “It didn’t seem that there would be another opportunity.”

Nyssa took his hand with a smile. “It _is_ sudden,” she agreed, “but I don’t mind at all.”

*

He still hadn’t answered her. As soon as they’d caught up with Omega (and he’d finished him off and freed Colin), it was the first thing she’d asked. She’d repeated the question several times since, but he was still hesitating about giving her a sensible answer.

“Look, Doctor,” said Tegan. “I’m pleased to see you. Really. You wouldn’t believe how much, after all the things I said last time. But I was hoping to see Nyssa as well. Now, one last time: where is she and what have you done with her?”

He looked up, looking as surprised as if she hadn’t asked it ten times before. “Didn’t I explain? She stayed back on Gallifrey, but we’re going back there now. I’m rather hoping she’ll have changed her mind.”

“Changed her mind?” asked Tegan, puzzled. “What do you mean? She’s okay, isn’t she?”

He nodded. “Yes, she’s unharmed.”

“Right,” she said and waited for them to reach their destination. She had a much better chance of getting a sensible answer out of Nyssa, provided he didn’t do his usual trick of landing in the wrong time and place. Mind you, if he was expecting Nyssa to change her mind about something, he didn’t know their friend as well as he ought.

*

 _“I’m not coming with you,” she told him quietly. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I want to stay here on Gallifrey with Damon.”_

 _He blinked. “Nyssa -.”_

 _“I can develop my skills here,” she added, putting a hand to his arm. “I’ve learned so much from you, but there are other things I want to find out. And I have ideas of my own to explore. It seems like a good opportunity.”_

 _He considered saying that he let her help him mend the TARDIS, but decided against it in time. “Does it? And what about Damon?”_

 _She glanced away, colouring. Like him, she was better expressing logic than emotion._

 _“Well, I shall stop Omega -.”_

 _“-And find Tegan.”_

 _“Yes, and then I shall come back and make certain you know what you’re doing. This is Gallifrey,” he said. “I don’t think you understand what it’s like.”_

 _She raised her chin a little. “After what we’ve been through? I think I do. But I could be happy here. And your other friend stayed. Do you think so much less of me?”_

 _“No. No, of course not. Leela was… different.”_

 _Nyssa folded her arms. “Different?”_

 _“Well -.” Clearly he should not have taken that approach. “She was always able to take care of herself.”_

 _She said, “So can I. You should know that, Doctor.”_

 _Unlike everyone else on Traken, she’d survived, something she continued to do every day. That much was unarguable. It didn’t make him any happier._

*

Despite the troubled beginning, Nyssa found a calm on Gallifrey that was the closest she’d come to Traken in a long time. It was hidden under an academic dryness, but it was there.

And she had so many things that she could learn, so many new things to do. Thalia and Borusa humoured her initially, letting her learn from them and once they discovered her clear intelligence, even took lessons from her from time to time, for all that neither of them would have admitted it. (Nyssa was a survivor of an advanced and supremely civilised race, not a primitive human savage, so they allowed this). She could build experiments and read up on her weaker subjects, a relief to her.

The Castellan, on the other hand, disapproved. He frowned when he saw her, found reasons to plague Damon for being the cause of her staying and glared if he ever came across them together, as if he was thinking of some reason to arrest them for breathing the same air as the rest of the Capitol. But it would have been unnerving if things had been perfect. Imperfection was sometimes its own perfection.

*

“I brought you something,” said Damon with a shy pride, entering the room where she was studying, taking down notes from a large, yellowed and dusty tome she had borrowed from one of the archives.

She turned. “There was no need.”

“You said something about missing flowers,” he reminded her, “and I remembered that there were some in one of the laboratories over in the old wing. Some abandoned experiment. I brought them for you.”

She took the bowl of flowers from him, her eyes glowing. “Oh, yes. That reminds me. I know what is missing here. There should be a garden.”

“A garden?” he queried, sitting down on the next chair with a smile. He waited for her reasons, because they were usually more than worth hearing.

Nyssa nodded. “Gardens are important. On Traken they helped to keep everything in balance. Here you have the wildness of the Outside and then the enclosure of the Citadel. A garden is a place where both of those can meet. Do you think there might be a patch of land I could use?”

“I shall find out,” he promised. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem, especially since it is for you. People have been saying that even the Lord President seems almost fond of you.”

Nyssa smiled back. “Yes, I think _almost fond_ is the most anyone could say of him.”

“We’re not all like that,” he hastened to assure her.

She looked up at him with amusement in her eyes. “I do know.”

*

Tegan followed the Doctor out onto his home planet, curious as to what it might be like. Rather like a tacky, over-sized cathedral, she decided and told him so.

“Tegan,” he said.

A party of guards marched into the landing bay.

The Doctor grinned. “The welcoming party, I see. Let’s hope they’re friendlier than last time.”

*

“Doctor,” said Damon, coming to greet him as soon as he heard. “We knew you had defeated Omega, but we wondered why you didn’t return as you promised.”

He frowned. “I’m here now. If I’m a few weeks overdue, then all the better in some ways -.”

“It’s been a year,” he told him, biting back humour. “Nyssa was worried, but I pulled a few strings to trace your whereabouts and assured her you were safe.”

Tegan folded her arms. The look on her face was insufferably smug. “You’re a year late? I knew it.”

“If you hadn’t distracted me, demanding answers while I tried to set the controls – it’s a delicate business, something you should realise by now -.”

She leant forward, putting a hand on his arm, not arguing for once. “Look, I’m sorry, Doctor. Let’s find Nyssa, okay?”

Damon said, “Oh, I think she was out in her garden.”

“In her what?” said the Doctor.

He smiled. “It’s been perhaps her most successful experiment. Many of us have found it both inspiring and intriguing,”

“See?” said Tegan, grinning at him. “Trust Nyssa.” Then she looked at Damon again, more sharply. “Wait, what’s this? Are you and her -?”

Damon turned a flame red. “If you’re asking what I think you are asking,” he answered, “then yes.”

*

“You do like him, don’t you?” demanded Tegan, the moment they were left alone.

The Doctor’s unease was rubbing off on her and she wanted to make sure there was no real foundation for it. Personally, she liked Damon and she thought Nyssa could do a whole lot worse for herself. She understood better than the Doctor her friend’s need for a home. She was only concerned it was the planet she was after, not the poor guy who happened to live there.

“How can you ask?” returned Nyssa, meeting her gaze frankly. “I could have simply asked to stay if I had wished.”

She hugged her. “Sorry. Just worried about you.”

“You needn’t be.” Nyssa glanced across her garden to where the Doctor was talking to Damon. She bit her lip and frowned. Tegan caught the look.

*

 _“Yes, very nice,” he had said, on seeing the garden. “Now, how are you?”_

 _As if, in some ways, they weren’t the same thing. She had thought he would understand, but he didn’t seem to, not this time._

*

Tegan folded her arms and blocked the Doctor’s approach to the console from the doors. “Wait a minute!”

“Clearly, Nyssa has made up her mind and there’s no point in arguing,” said the Doctor. “We should leave. Now, Tegan -. Tegan, this is _not_ helpful.”

She continued to bar his way. “Too right it isn’t. It isn’t meant to be. I don’t know why this is such a problem for you, although I could make some guesses, but you’ve upset Nyssa. She’d like you to be pleased for her and we’re not running out on her until you can manage to at least say goodbye properly and look half-way happy about this.”

“ _Tegan._ ”

“Well?”

He sighed. “I’m not sure you’d be able to understand. It’s Gallifrey. I don’t think Nyssa can fully comprehend the realities of life in the Capitol. I’d rather she didn’t have to find out. Now, will you stop being irrational?”

“Nyssa knows exactly what she’s doing,” she told him. “If you don’t know that, you don’t know her at all. And if you didn’t fit in here, that doesn’t mean that Nyssa won't. I mean, give you a rule and you start looking for a loophole -.”

“If you’re not going to say anything helpful, I’d like to leave -.”

She glared at him. “Oh, will you listen for once? This is important!”

“Go on, then,” he said. “You were saying?”

Tegan shrugged. “Oh, who says I know anything? But it seems to me that Nyssa can see beauty in rules and scientific patterns. I’m not trying to insult anyone, but she made a garden. You’d have been off exploring the wilderness or whatever. And that’s all beside the point when it comes to Damon. Anywhere looks a lot more attractive if there’s someone you like around.”

“Which is precisely -.”

“And as she’s every bit as stubborn as either of us, you might as well try goodbye with a smile this time,” she finished. “Plus, she’s had a year to start regretting it if she was going to, thanks to your usual bad timing.

He merely coughed and then put his hands in the pockets of his long jacket. Not exactly illuminating.

“Does any of that make any sense?” she asked, losing her forcefulness.

He paused for a long moment and then smiled at her. “It’s unaccountable, but I rather think it might.”

*

“You’ll do good work here,” the Doctor said, when he came to say farewell.

She smiled, evidently touched, and kissed him goodbye. “I shall try, anyway.”

Tegan watched and tried not to look too pleased with herself. It wasn’t every day the Doctor admitted she was right, even when she was. And then she forgot all that, when she had to part with her friend and wound up being the only one in tears and looked at oddly by a lot of superior aliens. (Same as ever).

*

Years later, when Romana returned to Gallifrey, she reacquainted herself with every corner of the Capitol. Finding a flourishing garden outside in one of the neglected, previously barren yards caused her to raised both eyebrows and enquire as to who was behind it.

“I like you already,” she informed Nyssa when they met.

***


End file.
